Four Ways the Super Bowl Can Inspire Your Employer Brand

For football fans, the Super Bowl is the much anticipated game of the year, pitting the final two teams standing against each other to determine the season's NFL champion. For non-football fans, the Super Bowl is also a must-watch experience to find out which commercials everyone will talk about on Monday.

So what does the Super Bowl have to do with employer branding? >Click to tweet this!

Well, it got me thinking … nothing is worse than a bad Super Bowl commercial! Each year, advertisers strive to come up with a unique plan to make every minute (and dollar) count in their spot. I’m sure we can all think of one of the “best” Super Bowl commercials of all time. Does a Budweiser ad come to mind? I thought so.

So, with that same sentiment in mind, are you doing anything to make your employer brand memorable? You wouldn’t want your employer brand to be lackluster in the eyes of the best-fit talent you’re trying to attract and retain. But, what are you doing to make your employer brand effective and unforgettable to your target audience?

Here are four inspiring tips to kick off your strategy this year. >Click to tweet this!

  1. Dare to be different. When was the last time you looked at the new year and said: "I guess I'll just do more of the same?" Never. With every new year, we have resolutions, promises and plans to do more, be better and try harder. Why should your employer brand be any different? Choose one risk—whether it’s injecting humor into a campaign or pulling your brand through to an area of HR you’d never considered (benefits or learning and development) and follow through!
  2. Rise to a more important or impressive level. The best way to elevate your current employer brand strategy is to get into the groove of conducting regular market research and consistent brand messaging. Instead of falling back to easy HR-led surveys, get some outside help with qualitative, unbiased focus groups to really understand why candidates and employees feel the way they do.
  3. Learn from the best. As your company builds and refines its employer brand strategy, take a lesson (or three) from consumer marketing. Take your marketing colleagues to lunch and ask them for the best (and worst) decisions they’ve made in their careers.
  4. Connect smarter. To understand how to best target talent, don’t assume you know. Creating personas can help you better understand your ideal candidates by getting inside their hearts and minds. They will help you empathize more with how they feel and make career decisions.

Who will win the “employer brand Super Bowl” in 2018?  Better start training now.


One way to up your game is by attending the Employer Branding Strategies Conference this Spring! Friends of exaqueo get 15% off registration BY using the code EXAQ15. We’ll be there ready to talk employer branding and hope you can join us.  

Kathleen O’Brien (@kathleen_eliz) is a Principal Employer Brand Strategist at exaqueo, an employer brand experience firm building employer brands and the talent strategies that drive them through research, consulting and creative and digital execution. Contact exaqueo to learn more about our employer brand innovation, workforce research and recruiting strategy offerings.

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